Canada-based investment management firm set up shop in India in 2009, in post 26/11 Mumbai, and spent five years building up and understanding the market. Since then, it has deployed over $20 billion in the country, with over half of it pledged to the pandemic ravaged economy in the last one year
Anuj Ranjan, Head of Europe and Asia-Pacific Private Equity, and CEO of South Asia and Middle East, Brookfield
Image: Madhu Kapparath
The first time Anuj Ranjan set foot in India was on November 23, 2008. While he is Indian by origin, Ranjan was born and raised in Canada, and was here from Toronto to build Canadian investment manager Brookfield Asset Management’s (BAM) India business. On landing in Mumbai, he went straight to the Trident (Oberoi) at Nariman Point and checked in. Three days later, the hotel was the target of a terrorist attack, till date Mumbai’s worst nightmare. Ranjan received harried calls from his offices in New York and Toronto asking him if he wanted to go back, but Ranjan decided against it.
“It was, in a way, a sort of homage to where we had landed, this is where we had these events, it didn’t scare us off from investing in the country. And on the back of that, of course, we grew to be what we are today, $20 billion invested in India,” says Ranjan, managing partner at the firm, who launched and headed Brookfield’s India operations. Last October, he was elevated as the global head of business development, head of Europe and Asia-Pacific private equity, and CEO of South Asia and the Middle East for BAM.
“ We are going to ramp down the nbfc corporate book to zero. our focus will be commercial vehicle lending, a great place to be in the nbfc space.”
Aditya Joshi, managing director, private equity
(This story appears in the 02 July, 2021 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)